The Guns Of August

I’ve probably read Barbara Tuchman’s book of the same name about half a dozen times, maybe more.  It’s a massive read, I think;  not for the faint-hearted and certainly a difficult one for the non-military-history reader.

TGOA is magnificent as a military textbook alone, but what Tuchman brings to the party is an exhaustive set of the biographies of the principal characters so that we can understand not just what they did, but in many cases why they did it.

And I know that Tuchman was a tired old New York Lefty, but not in this work.

Anyway, I happened on this EwwwChoob video which follows the book faithfully, albeit cutting a few parts out (because otherwise it would run for not 100 minutes, but for three days — about as long as it takes to read Tuchman’s volume).

And it has lots and lots of original footage, none of that tiresome reenactment nonsense.  Enjoy.


Afterthought:  Tuchman’s prequel to The Guns Of August, A Proud Tower, will change your ideas of history completely, and for the better.  It did mine, at any event.

Also:  link fixed.

Logistics

I was going to talk at some length about the “supply-chain crisis” with respect to the grocery business, but Sundance did it for me.

And for what it’s worth, his diagnosis and analysis are absolutely 100% correct.  As long as there are no hiccups in any aspect of the supply chain, “just-in-time” supply is the Finance Department’s wet dream.  But note the term, “any aspect“.

A driver shortage, a spare parts shortage, a labor shortage, a packaging shortage or a fuel shortage, and the whole Jenga structure falls over.  If all of those happen at about the same time, the Jenga structure disappears completely and would take months if not years to be restored.

As we are going to see very soon.  Stock up now, folks, while you still can.  And for once, I’m not talking about ammo.

Speed Bump

In an article talking about some woman getting ditched by her fiance just before the wedding boo hoo, we find this:

“And still to this day, she claims that she has not heard from him. He completely ghosted her and vanished out of thin air.”

OUT of thin air, instead of INTO thin air?

Definitely an ETL (English as third language) moment.

Grrrrrrrr….


Update:  From the same rag:

…that would be “SLAIN“… you illiterate asswipes.

“Dear Dr. Kim”

“Dear Dr. Kim:
“I met this really cute girl and we started dating.  She’d told me on our first date that she was a vegan, but I forgot all about that because she was so fine.
“Anyway, all was well until one night I complained to her about her cooking — there was something definitely ‘off’ about her spaghetti meat sauce, it tasted slightly rotten.
“I was absolutely knocked off my feet when she confessed that it wasn’t meat at all —  she’d used a vegetarian substitute.
“To make things worse, she also confessed that from the day she’d first starting cooking our meals, she’d always used vegan substitutes.  (I had noticed that I’d constantly been feeling tired of late, but I put it down to the sex we’d been having.)
“I told her that I didn’t want to see her again until she apologized for being so deceptive, but all my friends say I’m being childish.
“Am I?” — Betrayed,  Brisbane

Dear Betrayed:
You’re not being childish, but you are being stupid.  Your first mistake was not running for the exit when she told you she was a vegan.  There is no greater indicator of female insanity than veganism, except maybe being a global warming hysteric, but I should point out that the two conditions have a large overlap on the Venn diagram.
Your second mistake is that you’re prepared to see her again as long as she apologizes for her deceit.  Are you fucking crazy?  Don’t you realize that this tart will never stop trying to change you into joining her stupid religion?  (And by the way, if she’ll deceive you over a simple thing like food, she’ll be equally deceptive over everything else — connect the dots.)
Toss her overboard.
Now for the future, I should pass on some excellent advice from my good friend Patterson, who always buys a woman a rare steak as a vegetarian/vegan filter on their first date.  Go, and do thou the same.

 

State Of Nature

From Glenn:

“The justice system isn’t really there to protect citizens from criminals. It’s there to protect criminals from citizens.  And within limits that’s a good thing, but when you create a state of nature, you get a state of nature.  And in the state of nature people absolutely do kill to protect their property from marauders.”

So the more lawless Democrats make places, it becomes more likely that ordinary people are going to take the law BACK into their own hands.

Always remember:  we deputize the enforcement of law to the agents of the State.  But should those agents, or their masters, refuse to enforce, maintain or protect the law, We The People have every right to take over that responsibility.

Life, liberty and property:  they’re ours, and we are going to keep them.  It’s a perfectly natural act, as Glenn says.

And if the the agents of the State — politicians, governors, district attorneys or the police — don’t much care for that eventuality, screw them.